Monday Matters: Election Official Retires After 30 Years

SALLISAW — “And that’s another story,” Bill Willis said Thursday, wearing a deadpan expression in contrast to the grins on his Sequoyah County Election Board audience’s face.

Willis, 86, of Blackgum, who is retiring after 30 years as a Sequoyah County election official/poll inspector, was reminiscing about life in the county, previous elections and changes in the election process over the decades during a visit to the county office.

Willis is renowned for his stories, Election Board Secretary Cindy Osborn said, smiling fondly at him. She’ll miss him, she said. Osborn is the sixth Sequoyah County Election Board secretary for whom Willis has worked since he began the community service in January 1983.

“All of them were nice to me,” Willis said.

Never Missed An Election

In the 20 years she’s worked with Willis, Osborn does not recall him missing an election.

When he began, Willis said, Cherri Lockhart was chairwoman of the Election Board, Jim Bob Wilson was the board’s Democratic member and Richard E. “Dickie” Cosner was the Republican member. Jack Keck was county commissioner. Willis was Vian Elementary School principal and knew all those officials, he said, before taking on the election official duties.

At the time, he said, election officials were paid $67 for the minimum 13-hour Election Day workday. Their workdays include setup time beginning at least a half-hour before the polls open at 7 a.m., and take-down time and delivery of the ballots after the polls close at 7 p.m. Willis has always worked the Blackgum polling place, he said.

Twenty years ago when she started working for the board, Osborn said, poll workers received $87 and mileage. Now they receive $97 and mileage, she said. The county board has 26 polling places, each staffed by three election workers besides the staff who regularly work at the 110 E. Creek Ave., Sallisaw, office.

As poll inspector, Willis said he picks up and delivers the ballot box and signs that everything is in order. If a problem arises at the polling site, he handles it, he said.

“He’s the bouncer at the polls,” Osborn said, laughing.

A Longtime Educator

Willis has lived at Blackgum since 1950. One of three teachers, including the principal, at Blackgum Dependent School from 1950-57, he taught third, fourth and fifth grades. The school housed first- through eighth-graders, and Willis had 30 students spread out over the three grades he taught.

His elementary students included Merle Rowe, who went on to become an election co-worker. Rowe is Election Board assistant.

Rowe said Willis was his third- and fourth-grade teacher.

“He was one of my favorites. He told stories. He always entertained us with stories about when he was in the Navy, and about when he built a go-cart — and all the parts he put in it,” Rowe said, grinning.

Rowe said the electric go-cart story fascinated him because his own father wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing.

“You remember that story?” Willis asked, chuckling.

Willis said he built the cart for his then 3-year-old son, Bill Willis, now a family practice doctor at Poteau.

Willis’ daughter, Cindy Jamison, is a Sallisaw Middle School counselor. And he has four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, Willis said, ticking off their names to ensure he didn’t leave any child uncounted.

Rowe said Willis’ wife, the late Phyllis Willis, was his high school teacher at Vian Public Schools.

After his stint at Blackgum school, Willis taught at Vian Junior High. He then served as Vian Elementary principal from 1976 through 1990 when he retired.

“Retiring” apparently means something different to Willis. After leaving the school system, he became a district Boy Scout executive, serving Sequoyah, Adair and Cherokee counties for five years in addition to continuing his election worker community service.

Memorable Elections

The first election Willis worked for the county Election Board was a May 3, 1983, countywide special election to convert Blue Ribbon Downs to a pari-mutuel horse racing track, said Osborn, who looked up the board’s records to find it. It passed 5,146-2,561, Osborn said.

At the time of the pari-mutuel elections, election records were simply written in a ledger, Osborn said.

Over the years, Willis said, he’s seen some changes. He remembers loading the very first voting machine, an Eagle model, with fellow election worker James Nelson into the back of his El Camino for transport to the polls for the March 1992 presidential preferential primary election. The Democratic nominees then included Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. The Eagles were intended to last 10 years. They lasted 20, until replacement parts could no longer be obtained, he said. Now, Oklahoma’s voting is all electronic.

Although skeptical of electronic voting initially, Willis said, it has significantly cut voting time for the voters.

He remembers working many special elections and many general elections, including one that coincided with the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Although the courthouse and other public offices closed, he said, the poll workers kept on working.

The busiest election and the one that sticks most in his mind was the November 2002 general election that also featured a Gov. Frank Keating-endorsed measure to ban cockfighting in Oklahoma, Willis said. It was the year Democrat Brad Henry first won the governor’s seat, Willis said.

You couldn’t predict the outcome of the cockfighting race, but you could predict the Democrats would gain from it because it would get more people out to vote, and there were more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. People were more given then to straight-party voting, Willis said.

The cockfighting ban passed, and although several area families who’d made their living at it had threatened to move away if it passed, they’re still local residents, Willis noted.

Willis has seen some changes at the poll he worked, too. In 1983, the site was the Old Box Church and the equipment was the old standing voting booths. The equipment was stored at the church, which later burned, destroying some of the voting equipment.

The site moved to the Old Blackgum School/Community Building until it, too, burned, again destroying voting equipment, Willis said.

The polling place then moved across the street to his church, now the Community of Christ Church. The first voting box was introduced there, he said.

Retirement

Willis said the last election, the November 2012 presidential election, just seemed too long, and he decided then it was time to retire.

Serendipitously, it was at that election that he was approached by a young man, Charles Davis, who asked how he might get involved as an election worker. Davis seemed like he’d be a good worker, Willis said, and he referred him to Osborn.